nuBlog

JoomlaWorks Extension Updates

1. Simple RSS Feed Reader

   

   Adding RSS/Atom syndicated content inside your Joomla website is now super-easy and simple with the 'Simple RSS Feed Reader' module from JoomlaWorks. All you have to do is add a few feeds to the module parameters, publish the module in some position and that's it!

   You can even publish multiple feeds at the same time (meaning in the same module instance) and have them display combined!
   
   The 'Simple RSS Feed Reader' module is based on the same feed parsing engine that powers JoomlaReader.com, the most popular Joomla news aggregator in the Joomla Community.
   
   The feeds are stored inside your Joomla site's cache folder and refreshed in a specific time interval, which you set in the module's parameters. This feed cache is different to Joomla's cache, as you may need to have your site refreshed every 5 minutes, but have the feeds the module retrieves stored longer than 5 minutes.

    

   FEATURES

   • one input box for feeds enables you to add unlimited feeds per module instance
   • combine multiple feeds into one output list
   • show or hide the first image inside each feed content
   • extract and resize remote images for more layout control
   • there's an additional option to serve resized images using a remote image resizing service (Images.weserv.nl - powered by CloudFlare's CDN) for fast loading times and without stressing your server
   • additional content options include pre-text, post-text and a custom link option at the bottom of the feeds block
   • MVC templating is standard - the module comes pre-packed with 3 sub-templates that will fit most sites - they also serve as a great starting point if you want to create your own
   • a special 3rd template (which was added in v3.8.0) allows for rendering any YouTube Playlist's feed as a list of videos (requires the use of the AllVideos plugin - also free)
   • one input box for feeds enables you to add unlimited sources to your module  

   After you install the module, add one or more feed sources in the related box under "Fetch Options" and simply adjust the "Feed Content Options" in the module parameters.

    

   STYLING

   The module comes with 3 sub-templates, which should be sufficient for most websites. If you want more control, you can simply override both the generated HTML and CSS, using MVC template overrides within your Joomla template. Or you can create new folders inside your template's /html/mod_jw_srfr/ folder and just select the new ones in the module's parameters.
   
   The compact template is inspired by JoomlaReader.com.

    

   COMPATIBILITY

   Simple RSS Feed Reader is fully compatible with Joomla versions 1.5, 2.5 & 3.x on servers running PHP versions 5, 7 & 8.

   A version for Joomla 4.x will be released soon.

    

   LICENSE

   Simple RSS Feed Reader is a Joomla module developed by JoomlaWorks, released under the GNU General Public License.

2. Simple Image Gallery Pro

   

   Adding image galleries inside your Joomla articles has never been easier!
   
   Using the "Simple Image Gallery PRO" extension from JoomlaWorksyou can quickly display a folder of images on your server as a stylish image gallery within any Joomla article, K2 item, Virtuemart or HikaShop product and any other Joomla extension that loads the Joomla WYSIWYG editor (TinyMCE, JCE, JCK Editor etc.).
   
   The process is dead simple. You just click the "Simple Image Gallery PRO" editor plugin button located under any WYSIWYG editor box, anywhere in Joomla and you can easily select an image folder to present as an image gallery on your site. Don't have images uploaded yet? You can just drag and drop images in the extension's built-in uploader and batch upload images, one by one, without overloading your server or requiring high memory limits from PHP. Then add captions using the intuitive interface, save and simply select to add inside your Joomla content.
   
   The "Simple Image Gallery PRO" editor plugin will insert a Joomla plugin snippet for every image gallery (something like { gallery}mygallery:200:140:0:2{/gallery} inside the editor content) and then this snippet will "automagically" present as an image gallery, in a stylish thumbnail grid (or slideshow) with "lightbox" popups to showcase the original images, when users click on the thumbnails!
   
   "Simple Image Gallery PRO" is the best Joomla gallery system because a) it's easy to use & manage, b) it allows you to embed image galleries right where your content is (and not redirect your visitors to some other "gallery" section!), c) it offers multiple layouts/templates to present your image gallery and d) it supports the best popup (lightbox/modal) engines to display the original images.
   
   Check out the demo we prepared, showcasing multiple galleries with different layouts on the same page.

   
   So now:

   a) you don't need to have an additional gallery component to display your images and/or redirect your visitors elsewhere, as the galleries integrate with your Joomla articles, K2 items, Virtuemart/HikaShop products or any other component that allows "plugin parsing" and also utilizes Joomla WYSIWYG editor plugins.
   b) you focus more on content writing and less on managing the images! You are not limited to embedding one gallery per article, you can embed as many as you want.
   c) you don't have to worry about upgrades. Simply install any new version of the extension on top of the old one and your galleries will inherit any new features! Fully backwards compatible and better still, it works with Joomla versions 1.5 to 3.x!
   
   

   FEATURES

   • Amazing backend component and WYSIWYG editor plugin allow you to fully control gallery creation, previewing and editing, either on a centralized place (the component) or inside any component form that load a Joomla WYSIWYG editor: We have created a new design philosophy that blends amazingly well with the Joomla admin user interface. And it's also consistent on all supported Joomla versions (1.5 to 3.x & 3.x UTD which is PHP 8.x compatible, released in 2026). You, your clients and your content writers will love it. And when you upgrade to a newer Joomla version, they won't need to adapt to a new design, because the design is consistent across different Joomla versions.
   • Fully configurable thumbnails: Adjust the default width and height, set the thumbnail quality. You can even have different galleries displayed with thumbnails of different dimensions on the same page! You set all this options right before inserting an image gallery into your content. It's a piece of cake.
   • Captions in your galleries: Don't just create image grids. Add meaningful information under each thumbnail! Using the Simple Image Gallery Pro backend interface (accessible via the component or the WYSIWYG editor plugin) you can optionally provide a short title and a more detailed description text per image. You can even use full HTML code inside the image description which is displayed on the lightbox popup. Don't want to add captions? You don't have to, it's completely optional. Continue to just upload images inside Simple Image Gallery Pro and let it do everything else!
   • Full JoomFish/Falang support: for captions in multiple languages!
   • Smart thumbnail resize: If enabled, thumbnails are resized to fit the thumbnail viewport as set in the plugin parameters. This option is ideal when you want to display images of different aspect ratio in thumbnails of the same dimensions.
   • 10 amazing gallery layouts (themes), including "Polaroids" and the JavaScript enhanced "Galleria", "Galleria White" & "SlickShow1" which transform your gallery to a slideshow.
   • Gallery layouts are based on the MVC architecture, which means you can fully override all gallery layouts (both HTML and CSS) to match your needs - and without caring about future updates of the plugin breaking your unique gallery layout! You just place the overrides inside your Joomla template's folder structure.
   • 13 of the best popup (lightbox) engines, most fully responsive to match your site responsive/adaptive design! Most popup engines are powered by jQuery, but we also provide 2 that utilize "vanilla" JavaScript as well. The jQuery ones are loaded in "no conflict" mode to avoid any JavaScript conflicts with other Joomla extensions that may also utilize jQuery-based scripts.
   • Flickr Gallery/Album/Set integration: Probably the easiest way to embed a Flickr set of images... Just paste the Flickr URL within the plugin's { gallery} tags like this { gallery}http://www.flickr.com/photos/joomlaworks/sets/72157626907305094/{/gallery} and you're done!
   • Single thumbnail mode: only one thumbnail shows up in place of your normal gallery but once you click on it, you can browse though the entire source gallery folder! This mode is ideal for powerpoint-like presentations.
   • Thumbnails are created by the source images, but even the source images can also be resized: By utilizing external cloud services, you can make sure your "source" images never exceed a given width (e.g. 900px). That way, you avoid causing any confusion to your visitors by opening a 2000px wide image inside a lightbox that covers the entire browser window, just because one of your content writers uploaded an extremely large image! Some of the popup engines go one step further and will automatically adapt the source image to fit the browser window, when their original or "cloud resized" dimensions exceed the actual viewport.
   • Allow source image downloading: want your visitors to download the original images you uploaded? Just turn on the related component parameter and your visitors will see a download link the gallery popups.
   • Slideshow option built into most popup engines: if you choose a popup engine that is "slideshow capable", then your visitors don't need to manually click the navigation elements inside the lightbox popup to move back and forth in the image set. They can simple hit the slideshow play button and the images will auto-slide until the end of the gallery is reached.
   • Embed a module position in the popups: want to serve banners in all your popup images? Just include a module position which fetches banners from some banner module and let Simple Image Gallery Pro do the rest!
   • Print stylesheet: A "print" stylesheet makes sure your galleries won't look messed up when visitors print your articles (cause browsers don't render background images when printing). Simple Image Gallery Pro hides all your galleries and puts an anchor link in place, when printing a page with galleries on it. So your visitors have a point of reference for their galleries and if they print your pages as PDFs, the get working links to click on when they view the PDF file!
   • Simple Image Gallery Pro uses the Joomla API to attach the various CSS and JS files required for the galleries: This makes it possible to use some of the many "compression" plugins (from the Joomla Extensions Directory) to "mashup" all these files in just 1 CSS and 1 JS file. More over, the thumbnail creation engine is written from the ground up to consume the least possible resources from your server, making Simple Image Gallery Pro "shared hosting" friendly too!
   • Fully integrates with K2, the popular content extension for Joomla, inside the "Image Gallery" tab of the K2 item forms.
   • Mobile/tablet device friendly: tested on iOS and Android devices of various dimensions - utilizing the "responsive" popup engines, you can also make the viewing experience better with touch support for navigating between images.
   • Advanced features include the setting of different gallery layouts (themes) and/or popup engines per gallery on the same page!
   • New extended syntax for more flexibility (for power users). Allows you to use multiple gallery layouts and/or multiple popup engines under the same page!
   • Backwards compatibility with the free version. You just uninstall the free version, install the PRO version and you're done! No need to re-edit your existing content items (articles) that previously included image galleries, inserted with the free version. If you forget to uninstall the free version, Simple Image Gallery Pro will gently remind you.
   • Requirements auto-detect: if something is not set up properly in your site or server or if a selected image folder is wrong or already deleted, preventing Simple Image Gallery Pro to operate properly, the extension can detect any limitations and notify you accordingly.
   • Frontend image gallery uploading is now possible to isolated user folders! That means your community's users or your site's content contributors can now use the handy Simple Image Gallery Pro editor button to upload and manage image galleries for their content. This option is applicable to any Joomla extension that allows frontend editing for its content (e.g. K2 or the default Joomla article system).
   • Better ACL integration for Joomla 2.5 or later. You can now assign permissions to create, edit and/or delete to separate Joomla user groups in the backend.
   • Enforce a file size limit (e.g. 300kb or 2mb) for each image in the gallery uploader.
   • Reads EXIF orientation data and properly rotates (or flips) images, which means there's now no need to use desktop software to manipulate image orientation first (especially on images taken on pro DSLR cameras).
   • Image generation using ImageMagick (with PHP's GD as fallback), generating thumbnails in WebP format (with JPEG as fallback).
   • Compatible with Joomla 1.5, 2.5 & 3.x and Joomla 3.x UTD (which is PHP 8.x, MySQL 8.0+ compatible).
   • Compatible with PHP versions 5.6 to 8.5

   THE NEW BACKEND MANAGEMENT INTERFACE

   {gallery}SIGPro_v3_Inserting_a_new_image_gallery_20190514::::2{/gallery}
   
   

   UPDATES

   Already a customer? Download updates!
   
   

3. Simple Image Gallery

   

   Adding image galleries inside your Joomla articles is now super-easy and simple, using the magical "Simple Image Gallery" plugin for Joomla.
   
   The plugin can turn any folder of images located inside your Joomla website into a grid-style image gallery with cool lightbox previews. And all that using a simple plugin tag like {gallery}myphotos{/gallery}.

   
   So for example, if we have a folder called "my_trip_to_Paris" located in images/stories/my_trip_to_Paris, then we can create our gallery by simply entering the tag {gallery}my_trip_to_Paris{/gallery} into some Joomla article.
   
   The galleries created are presented as a grid of image thumbnails. When your visitors click on a thumbnail, they see the original image in a lightbox popup. The thumbnails are generated and cached using PHP for better results.
   
   So let's briefly see the main advantages of using Simple Image Gallery on your Joomla website:

   • you don't need to have an additional gallery component to display a few images,
   • you don't need to tell your visitors "to see our photos from Paris click here" and
   • you focus more on content writing and less on administering the images!

   
   The plugin is ideal for news portals wanting to display some product images, for example, inside their articles. Or for people who quickly wanna show their summer vacation pictures. With Simple Image Gallery, you can have as many galleries as you want inside each article.
   
   The image gallery grid can also be printed when using the print preview feature available in most Joomla components (including the default article system component and K2).
   
   Please note that if you want to create a gallery from a subfolder located inside your "image gallery root folder", simply adjust the plugin syntax to reflect the remaining path (after your set "root folder"), e.g. {gallery}folder/subfolder/othersubfolder{/gallery}. Make sure you write the path to your target folder without any slashes at the beginning or the end of your path.

   You can see a demo of the plugin here: https://demo.joomlaworks.net/simple-image-gallery
   
   Want more features like individual thumbnail captions, multiple layouts, multiple popup engines, gallery ordering, module loading and more?
   Then check out Simple Image Gallery PRO at: https://www.joomlaworks.net/extensions/commercial/simple-image-gallery-pro

   Please show your support in our work by rating and/or commenting on this extension at the official Joomla Extensions website: https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/simple-image-gallery/

   Simple Image Gallery is fully compatible with Joomla versions 1.5, 2.5, 3.x & 4.x on servers running PHP versions 5, 7 & 8.

   Simple Image Gallery is a Joomla plugin developed by JoomlaWorks, released under the GNU General Public License.

    

4. Frontpage SlideShow

   

   Now fully responsive & Joomla 1.5 - 3.x compatible!
   
   Frontpage SlideShow is the easiest & most eye-catching way to display your featured articles or products in your Joomla website.

   
   
   
   It creates an uber cool slideshow from various content sources in Joomla, in a variety of templates and combined effects.
   
   Frontpage SlideShow allows you to create multiple slideshows within your Joomla website (in different pages or even on the same page), comes with 8 uniquely styled templates, a performant/lightweight slideshow engine with crossfade & carousel based transitions, text effects, statistics and can retrieve content automatically from Joomla articles/menus, K2 items and Virtuemart/HikaShop products!
   
   Frontpage SlideShow is a pure CSS & JavaScript based slideshow system, which means it's dead simple to customize for any device type.
   
   And don't worry about how you'll setup your slideshows. Frontpage Slideshow has a dedicated Joomla backend component which you use to effortlessly manage your slideshows. Easy and fast.
   
   Moreover, it natively supports content fetching from K2 and the most popular e-commerce components for Joomla: Virtuemart and HikaShop. That means you quickly make up your slides just by selecting the source (e.g. a K2 item) and Frontpage Slideshow will fetch in a snap the title, description text and associated image!

    

   FEATURES

   • Fully compatible with Joomla 1.5 - 3.x & Joomla 3.x UTD
   • Lightweight & frontend optimized slideshow engine, based on jQuery, offering crossfade & carousel transition effects between slides, lava-lamp style navigation, progress bar and text transition effects. That means you have 24 different effect combinations to use!
     
   • 9 responsive slideshow templates to get you started. Customizing them is very easy as all fonts, font-sizes, colors etc. are controlled by CSS. Building your own is a joy if you know your way around with MVC templating in Joomla.
   • The slide creation process is dead simple to use through guided steps.
   • Drag and drop slide re-ordering (per category) in the backend.
   • Integration with Joomla articles and the most popular Joomla content extensions like K2, Virtuemart & HikaShop. That means Frontpage Slideshow can import the title, text, link and associated image from such components with a single clicks. For example, if you want to create a slide from a K2 item, all you have to do is select that K2 item and Frontpage Slideshow will automatically populate all slide fields, which you are free of course to edit as you wish!
   • You can now display your slideshows either via the module (or multiple module copies) or via the new component view. That means you can create a direct menu link to a specific slideshow, so you can e.g. assign a slideshow to your homepage, without messing with module positions and funky module display conditions. This option is ideal for portfolio based websites that want to assign slideshows directly to Joomla menu items.
   • Multiple slideshows in your Joomla website, even on the same page (thanks to new slideshow engine) - so you can have a slideshow fetched in the component region and an other in a module or in combinations you define.
   • Better slide image uploading using ajax (which means better previewing) and better slide image management (similar to K2's), with multiple copies of your original image created for better performance. And we got some cool new templates to show in the near future using these different size images...
   • Statistics! Frontpage Slideshow will now track (by default) all slideshow clicks and create beautiful statistics graphs in the backend, so you can visually see which are your most popular slides in various timeframes. Using Frontpage Slideshow to promote products? Now you can now which products draw your customers attention more! Statistics can of course be disabled at any time if you prefer SEO over click tracking.
   • Better server-side performance compared to version 2.x. A new caching layer for the module and the new slideshow content prefetching mechanism, which reduces the queries needed to retrieve slide content from third-party extensions (K2, Virtuemart & HikaShop). In high traffic or high content volume Joomla websites, this translates to significantly better performance.

   The component's user interface is very clean and easy to learn. It consists of only 2 areas to edit: your slides and your categories (slideshows).
   
   Additionally, the styling/customization of each slideshow is entirely HTML/CSS based. You have full control over the layout of the slideshow and you can easily style it to suit your needs. No other website will ever share the same looks as yours!
   
   As with all our Joomla extensions, Frontpage Slideshow uses MVC template overrides - so you can modify existing templates or create your own from scratch without a) hacking core extension code and b) worrying about future updates breaking up your changes.
   
   Frontpage Slideshow has been successfully tested in all major browsers. The prebundled slideshow templates are fully compatible with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Edge and Internet Explorer version 7 and above.
   
   

   SCREENSHOTS

   Backend interface screenshots taken from Joomla 1.5 (which is nearly identical to Joomla 2.5) & Joomla 3.x. Frontpage Slideshow uses the Joomla backend design guidelines so it will match the design of all these Joomla versions, from 1.5 to 3.x.
   
   {gallery}galleries/FPSS_3.0.0_screenshots{/gallery}

5. Disqus Comments (for Joomla)

   

   Disqus Comments (for Joomla) integrates the Disqus comments system & service into any Joomla based website. Disqus (pronounced 'discuss') is a service and tool for web comments and discussions - currently the most popular comments-as-a-service provider worldwide. It makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.

   In short, the most important features of the service are realtime comments, inline media embedding, mobile commenting, social integration with Twitter, Facebook & other services and great moderation & anti-spam tools.
   
   You can learn more about all Disqus features here.
   
   Signup for a free account at https://disqus.com.

    

   USING DISQUS ON YOUR JOOMLA! WEBSITE

   After you signup for an account and add your website or blog at the Disqus dashboard, all you have to do to integrate Disqus in your Joomla website is copy your subdomain name (shortname) over to the (content) plugin's related field.

    

   FEATURES

   - Options for comments counter/anchor link for listing and article pages
   - Choose to integrate Disqus comments in specific categories and/or menu items
   - Neutral design for easy integration on any template design
   - Fully MVC skinnable. Just copy the /plugins/content/jw_disqus/tmpl folder (in Joomla 1.5) or /plugins/content/jw_disqus/jw_disqus/tmpl (in Joomla 2.5 or newer) inside your Joomla template's /html folder, rename to /html/jw_disqus and start tweaking the HTML and CSS!
   - Scrolling effects for anchor links
   - Option for testing Disqus comments plugin locally before going live.

    

   COMPATIBILITY

   Disqus Comments (for Joomla) is compatible with Joomla versions 1.5, 2.5 & 3.x on servers running PHP versions 5, 7 and 8.

   A version for Joomla 4 will also be released soon.

    

   LICENSE

   Disqus Comments (for Joomla) is a Joomla plugin developed by JoomlaWorks, released under the GNU General Public License.